UCSD offers roadmap for coping with climate change

Climate change is real. It'll cause significant damage. But aspects of the science of global warming aren't resolved. And many of the political approaches being used to address climate change are naive or ineffective.

David Victor, a professor of political science at UC San Diego, delivers this message in unapologetic terms in his new book, "Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet."

Victor also offers a roadmap to dealing with global warming in a book that's receiving considerable praise, including this remark from Thomas C. Schelling, a Nobel Prize-winning economist:

"I cannot claim to have read all the books on global warming and climate change, but I've read enough, in the thirty years that I have been studying the subject, to assure you that it is exceedingly unlikely that there's another one out there that is as good, let alone better, than David Victor's. He is up to date on the science; he has more than two decades of experience in policy-making, especially international environmental policy-making; he is patient and fair-minded; and he writes in plain English. If you want to know what book to read, this one is it."

Below, you'll find excerpts of the six key points that Victor makes in the introduction of his book. We look forward to your thoughts in Comments, and ask that you speak with the civility found in Victor's book. Comments that contain insults of other readers will be deleted.

Any serious effort to slow global warming must start with one geophysical fact. The main human cause of warming is carbon dioxide (C02). Other gases also change the climate, but compared with C02 they are small players. Making a big dent in global warming requires making a big dent in C02. Most of the economic and political challenges in slowing global warming stem from the fact that C02 lingers in the atmosphere for a century or longer, which is why climate policy experts call it a stock pollutant ...

Just stopping the build-up requires cutting worldwide emissions by about half. Lowering the stock, which is what's ultimately needed to reverse global warming, demands even deeper cuts. Exactly how much of a cut will be needed is hard to pin down because the natural processes that remove C02 are not fully understood. There's a chance they will become a lot less effective as the stock of C02 rises, which would imply the need for even deeper cuts.

MYTHS ABOUT THE POLICY PROCESS

International coordination on global warming has become stuck in gridlock in part because policy debates are steeped in a series of myths. These myths allow policy makers to pretend that the C02 problem is easier to solve than it really is. They perpetuate the belief that if only societies had 'political will' or 'ambition' they could tighten their belt straps and get on with the task. The problem isn't political will. It's the imaginary visions that people have about how policy works ...

One is the 'scientist's myth,' which is the view that scientific research can determine the safe level of global warming. Once scientists have drawn red lines of safety then everyone else in society optimizes to meet that global goal. The reality is that nobody knows know much warming is safe, and what society expects from science is far beyond what reasonable scientists can actually deliver. Policy makers often ask for a 'scientific consensus,' but nothing that is really interesting to scientists lends itself to consensus. The climate system is intrinsically complex with few useful simple red lines; 'safety' is a product of circumstances and interests not just geophysics. The result is an obsession by policy advocates with setting false and unachievable goals.

REGULATING EMISSIONS

The tighter the screws on emissions the harder it will be to plan regulation according to exact targets and timetables. And the tighter the screws the more that efforts by one government will depend on what others do as well. This helps explain some of the gridlock from Kyoto to Copenhagen. International negotiations have been organized mainly to encourage governments to coordinate around emission targets and timetables. But no government that is serious about making credible promises actually knows the emission levels that will emanate from its economy.

Technology policy has become a poor cousin of serious efforts to slow global warming. Nearly everyone agrees that massive innovation is needed. Oddly, very few studies actually examine the question that matters most for policy; how to design a big push on innovation. A growing number of advocates call for a 'Manhattan project' on global warming but that model is exactly wrong. (In) the US crash program to develop nuclear weapons, there was just one customer (the US military); commercial competition was irrelevant and costs were no object. 'Putting a man on the Moon,' another common refrain, followed the same model and is equally poorly suited for global warming.

Almost as dangerous are wild ideas for quickly and radically increasing R@D spending without any serious plan for how new money can be spent well. Ramping up spending too quickly will just raise the price of R@D without much affecting what really matters, which is innovative output.

BRACING FOR CHANGE

Even under the best scenarios the world is in for probably large changes in climate. For many years, this subject was taboo in most circles because many of the most ardent advocates for global warming policy feared that talking about the need to prepare for a warmer world would signal defeat. Worse, it might signal that warming was tolerable, and that might lead governmens to lose focus on the central task of regulating emissions. It is much sexier to imagine bold schemes that stop global warming rather than the millions of initiatives that will be needed to cope with new climates. Yet the unsexy need to brace for change is unavoidable.

A NEW INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY

There is no shortage of institutions already working on climate change. What's missing is a strategy focused on getting countries to make reliable promises about what they can and will implement. The central diplomatic task in the coming years will be to couple those national promises to efforts that other nations will undertake so that, over time, each major country sees growing incentives to implement more effective policies to control emissions.